Religion

When I was four years old, my younger brother was born. My parents focused on my brother and spent less time with me. It was only 40 years later that I discovered how this had affected me.

Why couldn’t God simply have forgiven sinners? Precisely because sinners cannot be forgiven until they completely understand sin, with all its far reaching consequences, or before the wages of sin are paid.

The words God is not listening! He is not answering! are the essence of one of our most troubling complaints. Is there an answer to it powerful enough to pull us from doubt’s darkness?

“And Who Is My Neighbour?” asked a Jewish teacher of the Law when Jesus Christ told him that eternal life entails observing two commandments: to love God and to love one’s neighbour.

Pray! If not to God, then to a god. Admit that we are defeated, because this is the first step towards victory.

"Religion is what is in my soul. No one can take away what is there. But in public we have to comply..."

We experience a feeling of urgency as a consequence of the fear of failure, or the fear of missing out (on people, opportunities, time, good things). Urgency is, therefore, a corollary of fear. Today’s Christianity, hailed by loud voices as near extinction, can easily fall into the trap of undue urgency to quickly regain what has been lost.

Towards the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there is a final showdown between Frodo and Smeagol. Smeagol tries to regain possession of "My Precious", and when Frodo resists, Smeagol tries to strangle him. One scene in this part shows Frodo shocked that Smeagol has broken his promise and, though on the brink of death, sees fit to plead for honour:...

A cold flash, like the strange, icy feeling after a burn, runs through his body with every breath. He feels his heart racing. It feels like it is counting down to the moment when it will explode—or, mercifully, to the moment when he will turn his pillow to the cooler side, and finally fall asleep.

I notice people, and passionately collect their stories. My favourite stories include those small cracks that allow one to peek inside another soul, those moments when their voice is almost imperceptibly altered, the eyes light up for a reason I do not know, and their gestures are unexpected.

Although we experience more positive than negative elements in life, we are still more intensely and more quickly affected by the unpleasant ones. How can we protect our joy of living despite the problems that beset us?

On a number of occasions during his writing life, Nobel Prize winner and author Elie Wiesel tried to re-tell the story of a profound experience he’d had as a young boy in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. He wrote a play, a novel, and even a cantata to try to re-create his memory of this event, each of which remained unpublished. Finally,...

"I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me" (Proverbs 8:17).

Work has been part of God's plan for mankind since creation, but so has rest. Setting wise boundaries between work and rest is not only a successful strategy for maintaining our productivity, it also reflects on the health of our relationship with God and our fellow people.

More than 300 bodies have been found in a Kenyan forest and at least 600 people are missing. The victims, including children, belonged to an apocalyptic cult that carried out a plan of mass suicide by starvation. The shock of the Shakahola massacre has reverberated beyond Kenya's borders, raising disturbing questions, including how the message of Revelation, part of the good news of...